Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate
by Magnipotence
Summary: Abandon hope, all ye who enter for the ability to tell the difference between reality and dreams has been lost and Will is at the helm for a downward spiral into a world that has been eroded away by centuries of disbelief. Rated M for stuff. Written for the hannibal bb on livejournal.


**Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch'entrate**:

(_Abandon hope, all ye who enter._ )

X

"_Revolution is beautiful, a serenade bursting into flames, I'll bite into your sinful neck,  
Burning so crimson, so strongly, so violently it's dangerous,  
I'll suck out your sins and ugliness.-_

Fog hangs over a black sea,  
the people rowed out and god sank

." - _Ascendead Master_, **Versailles.**

X

Little child babe born in the dark – it wails and it screams and turns the mother's heart to dust. Little child babe borne from the stars – a beast in its cradle that turns angel's wings to dust.

(Not my child)

The beast is a replacement for a child now gone – a boy once loved by its mother and her other son. Stolen away he was to a land so near and far, replaced by naught but a monster's child whose teeth glitter in the dark.

(Where is my son)

The monster in the cradle, who wails in the black – he rocks at his prison and screams at the stars. The mother lay crying near off but not too far. She clutches her bleeding breast and throws open the window to the outside world

(Give me my child)

Beneath the monster's echoes, she yells her desperate plea

return my child return my son I will do anything please return my son –

But all she is hears is the sound of trees laughing with the wind. (_Dance with us once more, Will_)

I am your son, the beast cries from its cradle, rocking to and fro like ferocious waves beating on the sand. I am your child won't you love me?

(You are a monster.)

It screams and cries in return, howling at the moon that peers in its stolen room. It grins and smiles and looks on in and the mother cannot help but to slam back down the window and close the blinds. The moon merely smiles, seeing all.

(But don't you love your son?)

She screams and grabs for her wicked knife (suddenly there suddenly there she doesn't remember where it came the iron is cool in her hand oh how it sings) laying to the side. The beast in the cradle can only laugh and scream louder, shaking and rattling and moving the ash in her heart. She clutches at her knife and leans over its cage, looking over the beast that lay tucked in her son's clothing. It smiles and grins and shows off its teeth and it speaks and it speaks -

I love you.

She aims for its heart.

X

He wakes.

He wakes in the light of the morning with the dogs on his bed (dogsaren'tsupposedtobeinthebed) and the sun streaming through the window. It mocks him with its brightness and its light and he can't help but glare at it as it hits him in the eye when he sits up.

(_He didn't leave the blinds open last night_)

When at last he extracts himself from the weight of the dogs who have made their home on his bed, the first thing he does is look for pants. He finds them naught in their drawer (which has slowly become the home of paperwork and graded essays handed back in and other teaching things he needs to throw out but oh he knows that he'll need them again some other time so there's no point he'll wait a little longer), but instead scattered in with his sweaters and jumpers. He extracts a pair and barely manages to get them on and barely manages to get them to stay up, spurring another ten minute interval perusing a belt that was found loitering in his sock drawer.

(An occurrence he isn't even going to ask about. The dogs did it.)

Twelve minutes after one is what the clock reads when Will finally manages to escape the confines of his room, fully dressed and nearly functional. When he at last stumbles into his living room, he has already prepared himself to find the extravagant mess he left behind last night – the whirlwind of paperwork scattered about the floors and tables, dropped haphazardly about as if the reports of vicious murders and naïve works of arising pro-filers had become massive flakes of man-made snow whose only destiny would be to clog up his living room floor.

Instead, he finds that his ill-made mess borne from frustration has been cleaned up, and its culprit is currently busying himself with Will's bookshelf.

(_is he rearranging my books_ - )

"Sometimes I regret giving you a key, Doctor Lecter."

Putting back an unnamed volume of some inane subject onto its now correct shelf, Hannibal turns to Will with an apologetic look on his face (that Will knows he very well means none of) and pulls away from the bookshelf. "I apologise, Will, but disorganized chaos is not always the best course of action."

"And cleaning at three in the morning isn't either, so I left it for when I woke up. It's not like I actually get guests."

"You should always prepare for the unexpected, Will. After all, it'll keep happening unless you do something to stop it."

For a terrifying moment, Will wonders if Hannibal knows, but his overly paranoid mind already knows that's not plausible. Hannibal may have been lurking (can the doctor even lurk?) about in his living room, but it necessarily doesn't mean that he knows? After all, what is there to know because there's nothing really to know because it was just another ridiculous dream, another ridiculous fear to keep close to his heart –

Hannibal smiles an awful smile. "Tell me about your dreams, Will."

He can feel the blood in his vein begin to freeze over with dread as the words start to register in his brain that has been strangled by sleep –

(Does he know, did he hear, how long has he been here, what is he getting on – Hannibal cracks a knowing smile and fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck )

The doctor turns back to the bookshelf without as much as a look at Will before speaking again. "You mentioned them weeks ago and never brought it up again. Did they persist and become too difficult to speak about, or have you simply forgotten?"

He knows he's mentioned the dreams before. He knows _that_. After all, how can one forget the times where he uttered the truth of the dreams that should never be mentioned again – because after all, is dreaming of killing and slaughtering and murdering something he should be dreaming about?

But, this conversation was weeks ago. It was weeks and weeks ago and another life time ago. What if he doing here _now –_

"Awful," he says after a minute. "Utterly and almost absolutely awful."

"Almost?" (Godforbid, does he smell a joke?)

"Keeping in my mind my tasteless insomnia and my bouts of sleepwalking." He scratches his head and finally makes his way over towards the bookshelf that Hannibal has been lingering by the entire time. His bookshelf, infamously known for its crass disorganization that has everyone who ever enters his home glaring at him, has found itself not so mysteriously organized into pristine perfection. "However, I seem to have had none of that this evening. Which begs the question even further – what are you doing here, Doctor Lecter?"

And the good doctor, pulling himself away from the bookshelf whose now pristine immaculateness outshines possibly everything inside Will's dreary home, merely smiles and Will feels recognition, feels the dreams curl around his neck and slip down his throat –

"There was a child murdered two states over last night," he answers, breaking Will out of his reverie with the deep baritone of his voice. "Apparently, just an original case up until four this morning when Crawford changed his mind and ultimately demanded that you be brought onto the team."

"And as a result," Will says as he fingers the cracking spine of an old book of fairy-tales, "you've been demoted from part-time psychiatrist to per-diem retriever."

"A good guess, but not entirely the truth." Once more, the Doctor smiles, but it's different, too different – "Of course, you should know that it was Ms. Bloom who asked me to come over and retrieve you. She was under the impression that Crawford would send his meanest brute out here to Wolftrap and that it would only end in bloodshed. As well, it seems that I am the only other who has the key to your home."

"And so, that is why you're here reorganizing my books? I thought there was a dire case I needed to be brought in on?"

"The state of your bookshelf was deplorable, Will. I was doing you a favour."

(Favour, favour, favour, _I shall do you a favour, will you shoulder the debt? _He can taste the _blood_ on_ his tongue _– )

"Oh, well, thank –"

Hannibal cuts him off before he can even finish. "No need to thank me, Will. Your bookshelf is in a much better state then it was previously and that is all that matters."

Awkwardly, he nods. (_Pay your dues, and the world will be yours._)

"However," he says thus with a finality, "there has been a change of plans. By the time I arrived here, Crawford had left several hasty messages, informing me that your services were no longer needed and that there was no need to wake you on your day off."

Of course.

"Did they at the very least find out what happened?" (_Will doesn't really want to know, but he just has to hear it, just has to hear it so he can pretend it never happened and lock it far, far away in a chest so deep that the dead themselves will never find it –)_

"Unfortunately as I learnt halfway through your front door." He pauses, running his fingers over the very same spine of the old book Will had just been caressing, seeming almost wistful before he continues. "It has turned out that the culprit was found only a few hours afterward the intital crime. It was the child's mother."

(_Little child babe born in the dark – it wails and it screams and turns the mother's heart to dust_.)

For a minute, he doesn't recognise what Hannibal has said. For a minute, he thinks back to his dream, to the child in its bassinet, to the monster who screams at the stars and to the mother who cries with it. For a minute, he is utterly silent.

And of all the things he could say, of all the things he could do (nod, nod, nod, nod like a bobble head), all he could find himself doing was uttering the simple word: "Why?"

Hannibal turns to him, looks upon him what he almost thinks is a hidden grin, and says with such a finesse cruelty that sends Will's heart shattering to the floor beneath their feet.

"She believed him to be a monster."

X

Seeing is everything, Mama told her.

Seeing is everything, Papa told her.

Seeing is everything, the fairies told her.

Never trust the fairies, Mama told her.

Never trust the fairies, Paper told her.

Never trust the fairies, the fairies told her.

And she never listened; never did. She closed her eyes and closed her eyes and took off into the woods, listening and listening with closed ears and seeing and seeing with closed eyes.

Seeing was everything, the forest told her.

Seeing was everything, the animals told her.

Seeing was everything, the beautiful man told her.

She stops and opens her ears. The beautiful man smiles. He is beautiful.

(Beautiful, the animals repeat and bow their little heads and smile and smile and whisper to her _let us pray_)

"Do you see me, child?" His voice is like silk. It wraps her up and wraps her up and covers her whole and she can only smile and nod because his beauty seems to nearly blind her and leave her numb.

(_let us pray_)

"I see you," she replies. "And you are beautiful."

He smiles in return and draws near. His smell is the forest and there is no dirt on his clothes. Jealousy boils up within her as his perfection grows close. She is so ugly, so ugly. She is the rock beneath the tiger lilies – so dull in comparison to the shining orange glory of the summer beauty.

(_let us pray_)

The animals surround them, bowing their heads and nodding their judgement. This is their god. This is their leader. He is their saviour, their lord and master, and he commands them with love. (_And yet, he is a devil, that voice says in her head._)They pray and pray and nod and nod and he smiles and turns to face her, so very near now and so very tall. She must crane her head to look at him. (_sell your soul and the flowers will bloom)_

"You are so very beautiful," she tells him and he laughs and the sound of it is like wind chimes singing in the spring wind.

(so beautiful and yet so frightening in the dead of night)

"You are so kind," he tells her and brings his hands to her face. He runs the pads of his thumbs over her cheeks and smiles and smiles and she cannot help but laugh.

"You are so beautiful." She tells him and he knows, oh how he knows.

"Oh my child," he coos, caressing her face. "Oh my child, oh my child,"

(_let us pray_)

She closes her eyes, revels in his cool touch that caresses her skin like rustling silk. His fingers draw into her skin, writes out pictures and stories and ancient tales that she struggles to translate. They are cool on her skin; a thousand years disappearing into innocent flesh. He smiles as history vanishes beneath his hands.

"Open your eyes," is whispered to her eyes, fingers hesitantly touching skin that has seen no bloodshed, has seen no war. Innocence and purity stands before he, and the glorious fey closes his own eyes.

"You see too much."

Her screams echo, and Will smiles. The child's eyes cradled in his palm only stare back.

(_let us pray_)

X

He wakes.

He wakes and the_re is a hand on his shoulder and Hannibal is smiling – (I am your friend, am I not_?_)_

_ -_And then there is nothing and he is alone, all alone, in his classroom. The lights have been dimmed and the room is left in near darkness. His only source of light is the glow of his work phone, glowing vibrantly with alert after alert after alert.

With trepidation rattling his bones, he picks up his phone. (_another dead man, another dead woman, another dead one slit up the back like a mortician's bride) _

It is a link to an article written by Freddie Lounds.

**'LITTLE GIRL FOUND WITHOUT HER EYES – THE WORK OF THE CHEAPESPEAKE LOSING HIS TOUCH?'**

Setting down his phone, Will promptly vomits into the nearest trash-can.

X

Carved into the world, clawed into the their skins, drawn onto the very trees that lean and tower high, high above. Carved in the hearts he has eaten and drawn in the blood he has split. They are trapped. Trapped in the glade, trapped in the 'tween betwixt the worlds, trapped in the dying world where humanity is but a rotten scar and will never hear them scream.

(A golden noose 'round their necks, the veil a clever lie.)

Will you love me, and the red girl screams with blood that tastes of human sin.

Do you love me, and she weeps in grey. Her skin is ash, turned so in a blaze.

Will I ever find peace, and the blue girl hangs from her tree of her own admission. Smiling, he kisses her purpling fingers.

(_We will never love you._)

Will you be my bride? The girl in green only smiles, clovers twisted in her hair, and the bells on her fingers singing like screaming sirens.

"You cannot touch me," the girl in green says, and he laughs.

I shall trap you a thousand years, he sings, for the king who is dead cannot do a thing.

"Your king is dead?" The girl in green asks, and there is fear. He smiles oh how he smiles (I will rise to rule)

The king is dead; weep for me.

"Your king is dead. How did he die?"

He is dead for a human has stolen his heart.

"Shall I steal yours?" (_like you have stolen so many of my ilk, aos sí )_

I will draw yours from your beating chest. Will you take off those clovers, and those bells, and let me love you?

She dances, dances, dances away from him, and dances throughout the glade where she is trapped (trapped like the rat her kind is). "Who is the human who has stolen your king's heart? Shan't that be the one whose heart you thieve away betwixt the glimmering veil?"

I have no use for one whose heart is already dead.

"He lusts for a human whose heart is dead? Is he mad?"

Some should say all is well in the king's head, he says as he matches the steps of the girl in green, but all is not well, my love, for the king is mad.

"Mad as a hatter?"

A sister murdered and a mother who drank the ointment. Is that not a recipe for disaster?

"What a pity."

She twirls on the grass, ringing her singing bells and rattling his ears and pushing him away, away from the girl in green whose clovers are twisted into her hair and who has bells on her toes that sing such dreadful songs.

What a pity, what a pity. Tell me, girl, shall you come with me forever?

"Who is this human whose heart is dead – who has stolen the heart of your king in return?"

A dreamer, as they all are. Will you be my bride, my lovely thing?

"A dreamer who dreams?"

Who dreams on and on and on. Come away with me, dearheart.

"And what does he dream? Of death and decay? Of terror and horror?"

He dreams of destruction, dreams of the end of the world. He dreams, and he dreams, and none are so lovely. He dreams of what he should never See – the death of his own kind and glimpses through the veil. He dreams, and he dreams, and won't it be grand if he dreamed forever?

X

He wakes.

Will wakes, and he is not alone. He is not alone, and he is awake. For a terrifying moment, he doesn't know where he is, doesn't know where he's sitting, doesn't know that he's truly awake. The surroundings shift; trees line the edges of his fading vision, weathered and ancient, and the veil woven between their trunks shimmers and shapes, and there is Hannibal, gliding among the the forest as if he is a ghost and he reaches out for the truth –

"Tell me about your dreams, Will," Hannibal asks him. His voice shakes away Will's day-dream, the veil flung away like misplaced pieces of the spider-web, and the forest burns. "Or do you no longer remember them?"

"I remember them," he says after a moment. He fights off the wave of sleep that threatens to drown him and claws away at the fraying strands of his last dream that are wound tight around his throat. His eyes flicker close, but it is only a second before they flash open once more, haunted by the split vision of the glade ablaze –

"I dream terrible things, Dr. Lecter." He says. "I dream of things that should never be dreamt. Things that do not belong to me."

Outside, outside in the real world where lies clog the air and dreams are drowned, it rains, and it pours, and from within the confines of his psychiatrist's office – Will can almost swear by it that it almost appears as if it's mourning.

X

He wakes, and he wakes to someone roughly shoving him awake. Will bats away their hands and –

Curled out before him, a forest clearing lays in ruins. The face of terror brutally carved into the barks of dying trees, the touch of horror painted into the dirt floor, and high, high above the stench of murder cruelly written into the grey clouds who scream with their stomachs full of mourning rain. There, stretched out before him, is the glade of his terrible dreams, painted all over in a sea of red. As far as the eye can see, it coats the trees, the grass, the rocks, and the hidden stream has been turned such a hideous brown. All across the glade is the colour of such shining maroon, staining the world with such its terrible touch, and Will suddenly cannot remember how he got here, or from where he came, where is he, where is this terrible glade painted in an ocean of blood disguised as vermilion glory?

And then he sees her, and he realises.

Sees them. (_And he realises_)

In the very centre of such this terrible place, where the blood began and pooled and spread, are the girls of his dreams.

The failed brides who would not go.

(_We will never love you_.)

To see them, spread out before him in their pitiful state, is to admit the truth – that he is having dreams of things he should not have. Dreams of things that should not alter occur. Does he dream of the future; dream of the very things that make him want to scream with fright and howl with growing terror? (_Or does he dream of what should never be and is it he who makes it the truth – _)

He feels his heart plummet to his stomach, and when he moves – feels the whispers behind him grow in anxiousness and curl around his throat. He realises that he is supposed to be doing his job – supposed to be reaching deep within and recall the events of what transpired here, but how is he? How is he supposed to do that when he already k_nows – _

There is the girl in grey at the glade's very centre – a smouldering pile of ash and bones for the exception of her heart, gruesomely ripped from her burning chest, left to rot in the hands of the red girl, beautiful dress ripped and body slit, whose fate would be to bleed until there was nothing left while the green grass withered and suffocated and died beneath them. Above them, the girl in blue escaped their fate to instead swing silently with words of love forever defacing her dead skin as her heart hung by the neatest of threads in the gaping hole of her chest –

Crawling out from the shadows behind him, Crawford claps down a heavy hand on Will's bony shoulder, grounding him to the real world once more. He opens his eyes, not even realising that he had them shut and breathes out from his nose.

"Will, are you all right?" Crawford asks him.

He takes a moment to gather himself before speaking.

"I'm fine...I'm as fine as anyone can be here in this situation. What happened?"

Crawford gives him a look. Crawford gives him such a look that it almost makes Will feel a little, a lot more worse than he already is feeling, but he pushes on with his question as is. (Doesn't remember, doesn't remember.)

"A group of hikers found them this way around dawn," Crawford tells him (again). "Said that they were following a herd of deer and found this instead. We're too sure yet, but it's likely these poor girls died just around dawn."

"Did you find anyone else?" Will asks, and he wants to draw nearer. He wants to draw nearer and closer and lose his mind –

The look Crawford gives Will is enough to chill his fiery nerves for only a moment. Yes, yes, yes, he knows how mad he sounds (knows how implausible the thoughts running rampant in his mind are), but he knows things they don't, and he cannot say a word, and there is a fourth girl who was everything and nothing and he wanted her and he does not know if those clovers and iron bells would be enough to keep the monsters at bay –

"He was looking for something," he tells Jack before the man can dig deeper. "He was looking for something that he thought these girls had. He was looking – "

(_We will never love you _what a pity)

"– for a bride." Never before have words sat so heavy in his throat. Crawford doesn't seem to believe him, and so he presses on, digging himself further into the grave. "He was looking for someone to be his bride. Someone to be his wife. Someone to _love _him. These girls – they weren't what he wanted. They weren't good enough. And in his anger, he killed them and ripped out their hearts –"

(I will trap you a thousand years)

"No. No, that's not right. He wanted a bride, and these girls were _perfect._ These girls weren't just good enough; they were everything he wanted. They were exactly what he wanted, and perfect in every such way, and he loved them so much. He loved them. He loved them so much that he trapped them so they could never escape, and he took his anger out on them when they refused him. So angry and volatile, he ripped out their beating hearts from their living chests because he didn't understand why, didn't understand their refusals or why they refused to love him when he loved _them _so much. And it was even worse when the one killed herself, because then he could only see how monstrous he truly was. Unable to handle it, he defiled her body so even she would know his wrath even in death."

He cannot draw his eyes away, but he knows he must or

"He wouldn't have stopped with these three. He was too determinant. Too desperate. It's carved into the trees, written into the dirt the utter_ level_ of his depravity. He was alone, all alone, and it was death sentence upon his skin. He needed to find a bride, needed to take a wife, and he would have left as many bodies to rot as he could as long as it meant he found what he needed. There would be more than three here if the fourth had not been want he wanted. If the fourth had not been coerced into going with him. If the fourth had not said she would love him."

The terse moment of silence is seemingly enough to gnaw at Will. He feels the sway of the wind, laughing at him as it rocks the trees and the long grass of the glade, sending birds aflying and bugs a scattering. Nature these days has not been his greatest friend.

"Goddamnit."

And it is then it has all clicked for Jack. That his job has gotten even worse than before – that his triple homicide gone horribly awry has turned into a dangerous kidnapping situation that could turn this triple homicide into a quadruple homicide or even into a borderline serial killing before the night is out.

And Will feels a little better. Feels a little more better that these weird dreams are showing him the truth; showing him events before they occur. He feels a little better for only a moment before he witnesses the dead girls' grin a bloody smile, sitting up and smiling and devouring their own hearts.

_You'll never find them._

And he is the only one who notices, and like a fool, he draws closer.

_You'lll never find them. _They repeat around the juices of their bleeding hearts. The girl of ash falls down around her own, falling to pieces again and again and she consumes the last living piece of her. _They are in a place where you will never find them._

(Where are they)

_You'll never find them. They are in the land of the fey._

Fey. Fey what a strange word. He's heard that word before, and it sits heavy in his heart. He's heard that word –

_You'll never find them. You'll never find them. Only the King knows._

The king. The king who is dead? The king who is dead and loves a mortal with a dead heart? The words of the man echo in his head. Who is the king, who is this madman who loves such an unfortunate soul.

_You'll never find them. It is the King who loves you after all._

X

He dreams.

He dreams, and he dreams, and he knows he is in an awful place. He dreams, and he know he is in a place that chills his bones and freezes his blood. It is so beautiful, so beautiful, and it is all a clever deceit woven into the intricate pattern of the black sky where all of the stars are dead (it is a world without stars, but full of dreams and lies and beautiful things) He is dreaming, and he is not, and he carries forward towards the music that is playing, that is echoing across the trees and across the valley, and throughout the world as a siren's song that draws him near. High, high above, the branches of the great oaks criss-crossing over the tunnel of growing green foliage have never looked so terrifying, darkened by the black and the grey of creeping shadows, and backdropped against a lifeless sky where even the moon is gone. They lean and sneer and call him names, lifeless even in the beauty of an eternal summer, and he carries on and he carries on (what a fool, what a fool, they crow, fool with the heart of a dead man creaking with a million years) towards the call of the music.

And he is not alone. He is not alone in this tunnel of foliage, not alone in this world of perpetual summer and spring. He is not alone, not alone, for there are a many other being drawn towards the music. It has become so clear now – the sweet tune of an ancient fiddle whose age is hidden by the happiness being screamed out from its glorious strings, and it sings to him, sings to his heart, and he must dance, he must dance –

The fiddle grows faster, harder, and the others run. They run towards the music and its sweet tune, bursting forth from the tunnel of green to watch the dancers twirl and laugh and sing and dance in a frenzy of wandering hands and fun. Will lingers behind to watch as they dance, watch as the others join in and dance and dance and dance. And old woman twirls and twirls and she crumbles to ashes, ashes, she turns to dust –

Will you dance, mortal, a young girl asks him and he knows from her eyes she is everything but what her size is saying. Will you dance with us?

And he is in an awful place once more, surrounded by happy people, surrounded by the dancing mad who will dance until they're dead. They dance and dance and sing and twirl, and the fiddle will play on and on. The young girl lingers for only a moment before she moves away, moves away from him and the dancing and disappears, and Will sees them all dance and dance around the fiddle player whose instrument is worn and torn and old as a thousand years but it plays on still and still. Played by a man with a dark face with cruel eyes, the fiddle goes on and on, struck again and again with a bow carved from only the mightiest of trees.

And the fiddle itself, hollowed and made into a perfection of imperfection, calls out to him. Calls out to them all. It sings and it sings and it plays its song and more people burst out from the tunnel of green behind him, joining in on the eternal dance as dancer after dancer turns to ash and dust –

Join us, a fair-haired being to his left all but sings, join in the fairy dance!

And he wants to, and he wants to, but his feet refuse to move. Such an odd thing to come from him, but he wants to dance. He wants to dance and dance and dance forever until his bones rot to _dirt –_

Hands pull at him. Hands of new, and of all, and of dust and sweet fur pull at his arms, his legs, his shoulders and towards the fairy ring. They pull and pull and push and shove and his feet move and the fiddle is a siren's song, pulling him in deeper and deeper and he is so close, he can hear the old fiddle groan and moan with each strike of the strings so fine –

He is pulled back.

The hands break apart, disappearing and shattering to glass that scatter across the forest floor, and he is far away from the ring now. Far away where the fiddle cannot drag him in, where hands cannot pull at him and wish him away to eternal dancing, and he is not alone.

To his side, Hannibal stands, looking upon the ring with a shed of emotionless amusement. The others of the clearing (the others who do not dance, the others who do not smile and devour thank-you's) have gone silent, and the fiddle goes on.

(on and on and on and on and on and on and on and)

"What are you doing here, Will?" Hannibal asks him, and Will realises that Hannibal is here. His psychiatrist is in his dream. His psychiatrist is in his dream, and people are dancing and dancing and spinning and turning to dust, and the fiddle goes on.

(on and on and on and on and the child smiles and he needs a drink of alcoholic quality or more)

"I don't know," is his great response. What is he doing here? What is he doing here? He doesn't belong here. He doesn't belong. These are festive people – people who love to live, people who love, people who live and love and dance and sing and enjoy and the fiddle goes on (and on and on and on). "This is just a ridiculous dream where in my craving for answers has become so desperate that I'm dreaming up versions of my part-time psychiatrist in order to foolishly create a sense of balance of everything in lieu of this drugged nightmare occurring before the both of , or you're the least dangerous person my mind could dream up without causing my irrepressible nightmares. Which ever is more accurate."

"Do you dream of me often, Will?"

"Do you want me to answer that?"

"Preferably."

"Not even in dreams."

"Either way, neither of those are accurate. Although your logic behind my sudden appearance is quite colourful."

"What are you doing here then? I didn't realise our friendship extended so far beyond the private setting that you would visit me in my dreams for no real reason if not for the ones I've just stated?"

The good Doctor's smile is something that sets Will on edge and it's too much for this setting and dead girls smile through their bleeding hearts and the dark, dark sky seems to be even closer, threatening to swoop down and drown them all in a sea of stark ink –

"Everyone must keep their secrets, even the trapped of this world."

"Where are we?" He asks, and there is more on his tongue. "There are no stars here."

"Do the damned deserve something as glorious as the beauty of stars, Will? These people are trapped here. They do not care for the beauty of the sky nor the emptiness that of which drowns on above them. They live in nothing but secrets – live in nothing but falsities and lies."

"That didn't answer my question."

"Do you ever answer mine?"

All around, the people dance and dance, drawn to the call of the fiddle's song and tune, and its tone is cheerful and happy but nothing but lies. To his right, Hannibal smiles (and it is a lie and he is dreaming and dreaming)

"Can you ever leave?"

"Those who dance can never leave, and those who wander have no need. It is the summer's night for all of eternity to the people of this glade. Until the fiddle strings snap and the fairy ring is forced to stop. Only then does life continue, and all is forgotten."

"Fairy ring?" (_Monsters written in celtic blood; fear the creature who )_

_ "_Not even the strongest creature can break the spell of a fairy ring. An eternal dance played by an immortal monster who gathers all to his call with naught a soul who could stop you had you entered. You have danced until died and turned to ash. Lovely end, is it not?"

"That's actually quite awful."

"Yes, I know. I never did quite understand what drew people to such frivolities, but I suppose it is quite easy once looking upon it from a distance."

"Why? Why would they come here? Of all things, why would you subject yourself to an eternity of _dancing_?"

"It wouldn't be an eternity. At most, it would be an estimate of nearly eighty years. Of course, one's body would still continue to dance long after the departure of its host. Otherwise, there would be an accumulative amount of bodies spread out before us."

"Ah yes, how could I forget – most bodies don't turn to ash immediately upon the event of death. It must be worked up to. After all, in the event of extreme dancing, why not just go all the way? You still haven't answered my question."

"And you truly have yet to answer any of mine, but I will take pity on you this once, Will. They come here for no other reason but than escape. At first, I did not see it – what kind of escape is endless dancing? However, they have no control of this dancing. Utterly deplorable, but it is what they want. No control. No responsibilities. It is a place where judgements cannot be found. A place where the troubles of the real world cannot hurt them. It is a terrible fate, in my opinion, but many come here willingly. More than you would believe."

"That's awful. Everything about that is awful. What happens when the strings break? And children who came here to escape are suddenly adults without a clue?"

"When the strings break, the song ends. And then the player changes hands. Then, it begins anew, and it starts all over again. And the people who are left over? Those alive who entered by mistake leave. Those who came with reason enter all over again. Very few it is when the shoe is on the other foot."

"Madness," he says and it is. "Utter madness."

"It keeps them alive," Hannibal says.

"Keeps who alive?"

"Belief, Will, is the lifeblood of these folk. These trapped beings who look so human yet are not. Without beliefs or dreams or secrets, they would wither and die out; just a myth written into the stars that have long died out." The sky above is so dark, so dark. It is a sea of an abyss, Will just notices, and the dying trees are its prison bars –

"That –"

"Does not answer your question? Reach back to the roots you have so lovingly forgotten, and you would remember that it does. But there is still the fact of the matter that you have not answered my own question."

Will does not, cannot answer; the craning of his head ripping out the voice from his throat. Far, far above, the sky is dark and black and foreboding and the dying trees shiver and shake, framing branches seemingly keeping the sky from falling –

"Tell me about your dreams, Will."

The prison bars fashioned from branches above them break, and the darkness of the sky falls. In the distance, the fiddle snaps.

X

He wakes.

He wakes, and there is no glade, no dancing, no screaming fiddle or a smug Hannibal asking for answers he does not have (cannot have). He wakes, and it is just him and his dogs, bathed in the glow of the sunlight streaming in through the slit blinds that have found themselves open once more.

"This isn't worth it," he finds himself saying. "I don't even know what this is supposed to mean."

But the dogs do not answer him. They never answer him. (Because dogs don't talk and this isn't another dream oh god this better not be another dream when will reality slit his throat – )

Nearest to him is Winston. Precious, precious Winston who has followed him everywhere in the few months they have known one another. Who only trusts Will and no one else. "Who let you into my room?"

The dogs do not answer. They just stare and yawn and one leaves, soon followed by his smallest who toddles out of the room with soft clicks on the floors and tails moving in time with their steps. Almost hypnotizing, but it is nothing for the fact that he doesn't remember how any of them made their way into his room, doesn't remember even going to bed –

Winston cocks his head, staring at Will with odd eyes. Winston doesn't have green eyes, doesn't have the eyes of a monster – Another leaves, slumping its way out and leaving a rug in its place.

They don't even give him a second look on their way out (he tries not to let his heart plummet to his stomach but oh look – the fourth one leaves and only Winston and another are left.)

Winston moves, crawling on and over his legs and nestling down and making himself comfortable over the covers. From the waist down, he is immobilized and unable to move and when was Winston so damn _heavy_? The last dog leaves with a sound and he doesn't even realise the last one is gone until Winston turns back to him with green eyes and a ferocious smile –

Dogs don't smile. Dogs don't smile, and his lovely dog is smiling at him and grinning and it so sweet that it's almost a sneer and he is alone with a dog that is not his dog and the door slams shut, echoing and ringing in his ears.

And then the beast's jaw widens, splitting open and emits the most horrible sound he's ever heard, and he can hear the women screaming in the distance, horses' hooves drumming against the land, and the terror seeping in its wicked way in through every pore. He is frozen to his spot, immobilized by this insanity of a creature who is wearing the skin of his dog and baying and screaming into the morning light of dawn.

Silence descends for only a moment, and he can hear scratching at the door. Behind it, the others whine and moan and bark and bark and Will can't move. The creature on his lap sneers, and its jaw snaps open wide, revealing sharp teeth stained in what could only be the telltale sign of flesh and blood –

And it howls once more, shattering his ear drums and screaming –

X

He wakes.

He wakes with a scream, jerking and flailing and pushing away at the hands grabbing for a hold on somewhere to keep him down. He wakes, and he wakes, and he can only hear the screams echo in his ears; feels the scratch of claws and bay of the dogs grate like angry sirens too close for comfort (and and and and the light of the morning is just a lie and the dogs do not talk and Winston is not a monster, Winston is his friend – )

"Will!" A voice attempts to pull him out from his terror induced panic; hands he cannot see grappling for him and he pushes them away, pushes them away so he can make reason of the unreasonable that has suddenly forced its way into his world.

(But he can't because it doesn't make any sense. It has never made any sense.)

"Will, are you all right?" Concern, is that concern he hears? (_What a joke, in the face of howling men and screaming women and devourers of dead hearts._) "Will, do you know where you are?"

He doesn't know, and he doesn't say. He doesn't know because he doesn't remember, even though it tickles at the back of his head, but he has more pressing matters to deal with. Perhaps it is the matter of the fact that his legs feel like lead, and his dog has turned to a monster in the sanctity of even dreams. What does it matter where he is? He will wake up somewhere else; wake up somewhere he does not remember; wake up in a dream that will tear him apart or in the reality that will make him go mad?

"Hannibal," he says when he remembers the name (written into history; into blood the face of madness gone astray elephants crumbling – ), "what am I doing here?"

"You came for our session, Will," he speaks like he's speaking to a small child, and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts (_where am I? Where am I?)_ "However, it seems you were unconscious the moment I answered the door. Are you hurt?"

"That's not possible." Will tells him, shaking off the concern slathered upon him. "That's not possible because I was just with Crawford and we were scoping out those three dead girls –"

"That was three days ago. Do you not remember how you got here?"

"No, no, I don't." and he can feel the ache in his bones; the truth lodged in his throat. "I don't remember anything these days but screaming and night terrors brought on by things I see in the dark." There is something soft beneath him, and he is sprawled out on the couch. "Did you bring me to the couch?"

"Would you prefer I left you on the floor?"

"Preferably, no."

"Will, you must answer me seriously. Do these types of things happen often, or do you make it a habit to unwillingly pass out in offices? Have your lapses in time grown worse that you are forgetting whole days, instead of mere hours?"

_Is it possible to make a habit of something being done unwillingly_? "I don't know."

"Is there anything you remember?"

"Screaming." He says without a thought; regrets it immediately afterwards as Hannibal takes on a cock of his head. He does not want to talk about dreams. (Hannibal wants to talk about dreams.)

"You are talking about your dreams. They are still persisting, yes?"

He can't remember the last time he bathed. "It's as if they're feasting upon my soul, Doctor Lecter."

"It sounds as if they have gotten worse then."

"They weren't all that great to begin with."

(where is this sass coming from; is it leaking out from cracks in the walls? Holes of his shoes? He's not even wearing shoes. Who let him out of the house this way?)

"Will, I am mightily concerned for you. It does not sounds that they are getting any better. What have they been about?"

"You won't believe me." (after all how can another believe in something that even he doesn't believe?)

"Pray tell, Will. This cannot be worse than any stories I have heard throughout all my years. After all, you just stumbled into my office, missing three days' worth of time. You're not even wearing shoes, my friend."

And then, how does one explain it? He clasps his hands in front of himself. "I dreamt about my dogs."

Hannibal raises a brow, pushing him to go on.

"I dreamt about Winston."

"And this is unusual for you?"

"I dreamt that Winston...Winston wasn't really Winston any more. I dreamt that he was a monster – a horrible, horrible monster who screamed and howled into the light of dawn. This jaw split wide and he screamed the out most terrifying bay of a howl I –"

"How many times, Will?"

" - have ever heard. Excuse me?"

"How many times did Winston howl?"

Will closes his eyes. It echoes in his ears, echoes in the darkness behind his eyelids and the others claw at the locked door, whining and fearing – "Twice. He howled twice. You woke me up in the middle of his second."

For a moment, he can swear Hannibal _smiles –_

"I am afraid that I know exactly what you witnessed in your most recent dream."

"Are you specialised in dream symbolism, Doctor Lecter?"

"It depends on the dream, Will. But, what you dreamt of is completely different, I'm afraid, and not so much as symbolism but rather as a omen of death."

"Omen of death?" Omen of death does not sound good. No, rather it sounds quite bad. In this moment, Hannibal makes his way over to his desk, running his fingers over the smooth finish. Will can only follow him with his eyes, immobilized by the weakness of his own legs. Curse his humanity – curse his weakness, his stupidity, his foolishness.

"What you witnessed is what the Scottish call the Cù-Sìth."

"And this Scottish dog is a death omen?" (Can't help but imagine a little dog, yipping and yapping but it's a lie it's a lie Winston howls and he can hear the blood screaming)

"Some do not take it lightly, Will. For many years, it was a cause to be feared. In some cases, the Cù-Sìth is rumoured to steal away pregnant wives to feed the children of the fairfolk. However, most legends say its call is an omen of death. It is said to steal away the soul of whatever unfortunate soul hears it howl three times. The third howl is said to be so terrifying that it literally stops the heart of whoever hears it."

"That doesn't make any sense," Will finds himself saying, finds himself pushing himself off the couch (where is the weakness, there was terror in his legs – ). "I've spent my life around death omens, curses, hexes, and what have you, but I've never heard of that particular omen. Why am I dreaming about something that I've never been exposed to?"

Hannibal folds his hands behind his back and gives the barest hint of a smile. "We cannot truly control our dreams, Will, nor can we truly understand them. We can tear them apart, build them back up, and attempt every which way and that through lucidity and witchcraft in the most futile of ways to turn them to our will, but it never truly works."

"Still, that doesn't –"

"Answer your question? Tell me, Will. When will you answer mine?"

X

He dreams.

He dreams, and he and Abigail are in sitting in a peaceful meadow.

It is peace.

(_clop clop_)

"My father never liked fields very much," Abigail says. "He used to say that it allowed for too much to go wrong. He always preferred the woods."

"I thought you didn't want to talk about your father?"

"I don't," she says. "I don't. I was just mentioning it. That's why I'm here after all – enjoying something he hates so much." She fiddles with the knot of her handkerchief and plays with the grass blades beneath her other hand.

(_clop clop_)

"Your father is wrong, if it helps any. Fields are wonderful and unappreciated. There are so few of them truly left."

"It doesn't help any. I'm still here, aren't I?"

(_clop clop_)

He wonders why he's here. Will wonders why he's here, in this meadow of all places with a girl who does not want to be here in her heart, be here with the man who killed her father –

He wonders why he's here.

(_clop_)

"Where's Doctor Lecter?" Will asks her, and she snorts.

"I'm not his babysitter."

_(clop clop clop clop)_

"Do you hear that?" Will asks, and Abigail gives him a look.

"Hear what?"

"That sound. Don't you hear it?"

_(clop clop clop clop clop clop clop clop)_

"Hear _what_?"

_(clop clop clop cLOP CLOPCLOPCLOPCLOPCLOP – )_

Screaming.

There is screaming.

Abigail screams.

Will turns his head skyward, and there is death written into the sky. Drove upon drove of wild black horses have gathered in the clouds, headed on by wicked men of rotting flesh and pierced armour who hail with the wind and scream with the thunder that comes rolling in their path.

Women are shrieking, children are crying, men lay dead in piles. The call of help is drowning the air, and Will can hear them all run, hear them cry and pray and weep for the nothing that will come, and the slamming of hooves is like a heartbeat, echoing in his ears and in his throat and keeping him frozen with fear –

He dreams, and he is being hunted.

He is being chased across fields, across glades, across fields and patches of land. They chase him through the forest, over the flowing hills and through dripping streams and passing creeks that gurgle with dread as the thundering clop of hooves tears their way through the blackening skies above them. Abigail is ahead of him, sprinting through the woods, and past the trees and the bushes and the thorns that cut and rip open Will's skin.

"The Wild Hunt is coming," A child howls, hidden in the boughs of a tree. "Keep low! Keep low! Keep hidden and go low!"

"The Wild Hunt is coming!" A man screams, half-dead upon the ground. "Save yourselves, lest the beasts reap your soul!"

In the distance, Abigail screams, and he fills with dread. He arrives to her too late, and she is mangled and broken upon the forest floor. Deer and elk scatter (and the blood flows flows flows) She screams, and he weeps –

"He is coming," Abigail says, and it is not her voice. "He is coming to save us."

"Abigail, we need to keep moving –"

"He is coming." She repeats. "He is coming to save us."

"Abigail –"

She screams, and the forest floor beneath her cracks and groans and crumbles, giving way to a deep abyss far, far down below. Her body falls and falls –

Will does not even have the time to mourn before he is being pulled at and away from the gaping hole suddenly appearing beneath his very feet. He tries to fight the hold, but it is no use. He is being dragged once more through the forest, and he has no choice and Abigail is dead, she is dead, it is his fault she is dead –

"We must keep moving, Will." Hannibal tells him, and there is no backing out of it. "We must keep moving. We have no choice. We must make it to the end of the woods."

"What about Abigail? She was still alive!" The utter obnoxiousness of it all – the total and utter disregard for another person's life!

"That was not Abigail," Hannibal tells him instead and says no more.

There is half a thought forming in his mind, saying and telling him to kick down his feet and refuse to move like a petulant child, but even he isn't so dull; even he can still hear the groaning and creaking of a forest being swallowed alive. (_CLOPCLOPCLOCLOPCLOPCLOP – _) Wild Horsemen still haunt the dreary skies, and the safety of a forest has been violently ripped away. Given no choice, he continues on with Hannibal who weaves his way in and out of trees without a thought to his motion.

"What is hunting us?" He can't help but ask. It is driving him mad. The sound of hoove-prints is driving nails into his skull –

And Hannibal says something, but it is lost to the screaming, lost to the burning skies and smoldering trees.

He wants to ask more. He wants to ask more, and he knows he should, and he knows he needs too before he wakes up and all is either forgotten or he does not believe. He needs to know, he needs to know, he needs to know, and he will know if it kills him.

"Hannibal –"

Before the question even leaves the sanctity of his mouth, they push through the final brush and emerge from the desolate forest and into the quiet glade of his nightmares only so few nights previous –

X

He wakes.

He wakes and –

"He's been really weird lately," Beverley says. Her voice is quiet, thin – the voice of someone who doesn't want to be overheard. "Don't give me that look, Zeller. I mean weirder than normal. Ever since that that poor kid got killed – Will's been off and on the rocks."

"Beverley, the guy's nuts. Ever since Hobbs, he's been off his rocker."

"Seriously though! I'm worried for Will. You may not have the same opinion, but I see Will as my friend. We aren't buddy-buddy, but I at least care enough for the guy! You know, instead of accusing that he's lost all his marbles."

"If you want my opinion, he never had them to begin with."

Something slams, followed by a swift _'what the _fuck'. "Zeller, don't be a dick. Will has got his problems. We all have our problems. He's a good guy. Seriously messed up, but he's a good guy. He's on our side. Whatever side that is, he is on our side."

"I get your damn point, no need to hit me again _please_. He's a good guy. He's a good guy but just missing his marbles. Is he secretly an angel of the lord too?"

"Dammit, Zeller –"

X

He wakes.

He wakes, and Crawford is sitting across from him. He shifts in his chair, rubbing his eyes. Across from him, Crawford does not look amused. (Then again, Crawford never looks amused.)

"That is the second time, Will," Crawford informs him.(When was the first?) "If you find me so boring, perhaps we should find something more interesting to keep you awake? I'm sure the trainees always need live target practice."

"I'm awake," he insists. "I'm awake. What were we talking about again?"

"The murders. You know, the vaguely cult-like ones that have been occurring recently? It's not everyday that a mother stabs her own child in the heart, or that a child has its eyes ripped out, or even that three girls are found brutally murdered in a glade in the middle of the nowhere! _Those _cases, Will! If you refuse to take this seriously, Mr. Graham, I will gratuitously remove you from this assignment and return you to your students."

Anger washes over him, drowning him in its red embrace. He can feel it wrap thick around his throat and sink into his veins. There is a gentle loathing seeping into his skin, and he is the fragile tea-cup, ready to shatter.

How dare he. How _dare _he. Had Crawford had any clue of the month Will has had, he would not be waving around his superiority as if it is a victorious flag at war-time. There are gaps in his memories, holes in his time-frame. He cannot remember what day it is – does not _know _what day it is. The days of a nearby calendar read that it is a Thursday (it was Tuesday last he remembers, gutting a fish angrily and its remains splattering across the counter-top – and then there is screaming – )

And then he remembers. If Crawford knew of the month he has had, he would not be sitting here. No, he would not be sitting here. He would be sitting in that prison of a mental facility, where Chilton would gleefully attempt to pick away at his brain to no avail (and Will would only dream and dream and)

"It hasn't been easy for me either, Jack. Forgive me if the overwhelming terror of murdering a child or perhaps tearing out a woman's heart distracts me from my _work_."

(And, from the way the man quietly sags, he did forget. He did forget that Will was a quiet man who took too much into himself and never walked away from it completely.)

"I'm sorry, Will." And it sounds legitimate, but Will knows enough not to think so deeply into it. "It's been a tough month for all of us. What with such gruesome murders, I've got people cracking down on the department because we haven't solved them fast enough. It's got people scared, and people are terrified that whatever is out there is going to come after them. One is ripping out the eyes of children, and another is stealing women and ripping their hearts out. Sounds like something out a damn Grimm Fairy Tale."

"Did you ever find the other girl?"

"No, not yet. All we found were some bells, but that's turned up no leads."

He closes his eyes. "You'll never find her. He's too careful. He took her somewhere where she can never escape. Only will she suffer the others' fate is if she rejects his other. Only then will he take another."

"Why now?"

"Beltane," he answers. He doesn't know where the word comes from. "It is Beltane."

X

"Beltane is an ancient festival celebrated by the pagans of long ago. Why do you ask of it?"

"I...didn't." He replies numbly. He doesn't recall this; doesn't recall any words leaving his mouth in the form of a question, of how he escaped from Crawford's office without incident, of how he came before Hannibal in his office once more.

"You did," the doctor responds (as if there is nothing wrong; as if it was not like the world was falling out between Will's feet and he could see the collapse of the universe between his knees). "Will, is there something wrong? This is unlike you."

His mouth is full of cotton, and his ears are full of screams. There are gaping, wide, glaring holes in the record of his memory, and he cannot remember what day it is.

"Everything's fine," he finds himself saying, and he doesn't know where it's coming from. Everything is not fine. Everything is not okay, and he feels like he's dying. "I've just had a few bad days."

Before him, Hannibal smiles a terrible smile, and Will feels like weeping.

X

"Don't trust him."

Whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper, whisper –

Don't trust him. The sound of raking nails down bone.

(He is all alone, all alone, never alone.)

"Don't trust him." Horror, horror, the rattle of stone. There is fire in his ears (and curiosity in his veins.)

"Don't trust Hannibal."

The eyes of a dead man open wide and before him, the graveyard is ablaze and between its flicking flames is a maiden. She twirls and dances between the fires, gliding over the burning roots and shifting foothills of long forgotten graves. Underneath the cruel moonlight, it is a maiden whose face is carved from bone.

"Who are you?" And the voice is not his – this voice of a frightened man who has not seen humanity at its worst, who can still believe despite the frayed human wings covering his eyes. `

"Sell me your secrets," this woman says with a maiden's smile and sharp teeth. "And I will tell you all you need to know."

There are stories here, in this burning graveyard. A story he is not meant to know. The end of humanity is before him – a devil offering a crutch in the face of nothing.

"Tell me what you crave in the dark," she whispers, "and I will give you the key to our world."

"What is your name?"

She draws near, and near, and near, and she is thin, she is lithe, and dancing on the fiery ash that burns beneath her feet. A bony face cast in moonlight, he realises that half her face is missing, torn to pieces and leaving a hard skull deep beneath the pure flesh of the beauty she was meant to be. She is no more than a child.

"Are you the human whose heart is dead?" She asks, and she wears a cape of human skin, twirling it in the dark.

"I shouldn't be here," he says, and the maiden takes his hand. Hers is a mangled and twisted and rotten and broken mess of a limb, burnt and torn and pulsing with death, and he can feel the chill of life seep from his bones.

"Hannibal is not who you think he is," the maiden says. She tilts her head and turns her face and she is beautiful and she is hideous. "He is everything you are not. He is not human."

She has the voice of honey-dew (and it is a lie, it is a lie.)

"Who are you?"

"I am dead," she tells him. "And he is mad because of it. Do not let him have you, dead man, or else you will suffer the fates worth than death."

And in the face of her warning, he cannot help but to laugh. It is a dream, it is a dream, it is dream, and he must remind himself of that. It's all a dream, and the girl before him is not real – she is dead, she is dead, and he is alive, alive, alive.

(_alivealive-o_)

"Do you even understand the terror you face, dead man?"

"I spend my days in a mangle of memories and dreams. Tell me," he says with a turn of his head. "Why should I not trust Hannibal? Should I trust you even more?"

There is fear in the Bone-maiden's eyes. And there is anger.

"You are a fool, Will Graham."

And he burns.

X

He wakes.

He wakes, and there's a dead girl laid out before him, clovers twisted in her hair.

"Oh God," he finds himself saying before he can help it. "Oh fucking God."

(_Will you be my bride? The girl in green only smiles, clovers twisted in her hair, and the bells on her fingers singing like screaming sirens_.)

Her fingers are gone, chopped clean off to the palm; the tinkling of her bells a haunting echo in his ears. Whatever clovers left in her once luxurious hair are wilted and grey, snarled into the mass of frayed and greyed strands screaming out from her skull. The pointed face, which had sneered into the face of royalty and scorned a monster's love, has been ripped away, revealing the sinew of humanity beneath and the fragments of a bitter white and shattered skull.

"Will?" Someone to his left (or to his right? There are bells in his ears) asks quietly. The hand suddenly coming down on his shoulder is enough to send him stumbling in fright, forcing him to catch himself on the side of the cold autopsy table.

He doesn't believe it. He doesn't believe it, but he knows it. He knows it down to his very bones.

(and he is burning, he is burning, _heisburning _– )

"It's her." Will says, and he knows he must sound mad; knows he must look mad with his jittery bones and his cracking voice. (he's dying before them – a spectre in his skin)

"Will," the voice of reason – Beverley – is there, and its calm. Its calm, its cool, and its the voice of a person who is approaching a wounded animal. The voice of someone who is coming upon an animal that has nowhere left to turn. "Will, are you all right?"

"No."

It's the honest truth, and it hurts in a way he never expected. He doesn't want this. He doesn't want to be in a room full of strangers, being handled like he's an injured and frightened creature, capable of lashing out at any and every moment – doesn't want to feel like he's the victim when there's a mangled scrap of a human lain out before them all to witness. He doesn't want this or that or any of what they're giving him.

He just wants to get through a day without forgetting it.

(And he can't because he's not allowed because he's cursed, because he's haunted, because he's loved by a monster in the dark – )

Crawford is creeping at his side, wishing, wanting to put a hand on Will's shoulder, but he doesn't. This is the face of ostracisation, and he can feel their eyes on his back, and he knows they want him to say something else, but he has nothing else to say.

"Call off your search, Jack," crawls out of his throat. "This is the missing girl."

_This is the fourth girl. This is the girl who went with him and met his wrath. He is going to kill again._

_ "_Are you sure?" Jack asks, and the laboratory is cold. There is ice in his veins, and snow in his ears.

"This is her," he repeats. "It can only be her."

And there is silence, nothing but silence.

X

The sky is dying.

The sky is dying beneath his fingertips. Beneath his bloodstained hands, it shivers and crows, gasping in the bruised and bleeding clouds, and blowing out the weeping sun. The people below scurry like ants, screaming and howling at what unfolds above them. The sky, a flurry of black and red, screams and cries and howls, and Will can only smile as the people squirm and writhe and experience what it is to be _alive – _

"Do you dream of dying, Will?"

(childprayloveme childprayloveme childprayloveme – chiLDPRAYLOVE ME – )

His eyes snap open, and he is not alone. And before him, he sees and sees and sees and –

He is in the field outside his home. The cold touch of winter has left, burned away by the blazing summer sun rippling overhead in the clear sky. This is a Virginia summer, soft and warm and nothing like the scathing heat of the deep south that he remembers so well. In the midst of the frost of snow wrapping itself around his throat, he's almost forgotten what it's like to be in the warmth.

(_But it's a lie, it's a lie – _)

"Where am I?"

Next to him, Hannibal smiles.

"This is your home, Will. Have you forgotten already?"

But it's not his home. It's not, it's not. There is silence in these weeds, missing dogs; the house behind looms in the darkness, and it is empty. This world is empty.

"No, it's not," he says. "This is another dream. Isn't it? This is another dream."

He can just remember the last dream so long ago – that strange world with starless skies and forever summers, and he was dreaming then, dreaming then of a darkness where the fiddle called to all. Just another dream, another dream with this strange Doctor with his strange accent and impeccable taste in clothing. For a moment, he feels unworthy – like he's standing in the face of royalty and is but a humble peasant. Aren't they friends though? They are friends, are they not?

"Is it?" The good doctor asks. "How can you tell?"

To say he can feel it in his bones is madness. He remembers being a child, camped around a low-burning fire with the odd children of his neighbourhood, telling ghost-tales in the dark. Stories of voodoo and ghost-hunts, and witches and dragons, and of things that made a child's skin crawl with cold even in the face of warmth. Children of the bayou these folk were, with their legends of rituals and choices and songs and dances, and Will can remember the stories of dreams – where evil could lurk and steal a man's soul, where people could walk and live a dream within a dream, where dreams could trap you and keep you alive until your poor heart died of fright.

(_and weep for the poor soul who meets the devil who has eaten their soul._)

He doesn't have an answer that doesn't want to make him bleed. "Even I haven't been gone long enough for summer to come, Doctor Lecter."

Will turns his head to the sky to feel the sun on his face, but he feels nothing.

"Will it ever come?"

And from the corner of his eye, Hannibal bows his head in the mockery of a prayer.

X

He dreams.

He dreams, and there is peace, and there is silence, and there is Abigail once more. She stands beside him, hand clasped in his own, and she is turned away from him, staring out into the abyss of the darkness before them both.

(He is dreaming. He is dreaming. The nightmare of Abigail is the daydream of his own creation)

"He loves you," the girls says. "What a pity."

"Abigail?" He asks, and he tries to convey the happiness he once felt in her presence. "Abigail, what's wrong?"

"He loves you," she repeats. "He will always love you. When will you answer his question, Will?"

He laughs awkwardly. "What are you talking about?"

"The heart of a dead man in the hands of a Winter king," she laughs. "Will he make you See too?"

And she turns to face with him with an eyeless stare; gory holes were her eyes once were.

"Will he make you See too?" She repeats once more, tightening her grip on his hand. "Will he make you See what you don't understand?"

He tries to pull away, to pull away from this thing that is not Abigail, but she's persistent. She pulls him closer, forcing him to stare into the holes of her skull, to smell the rotting putrid odour of her face. She smiles, and she smiles, and pulls him in close as if they are children about to whisper terrible secrets.

"What a pity," she says. "You will See what the rest of us never can."

Will screams.

X

He screams.

He screams, and screams, and screams -

There is a hand on his shoulder, and Hannibal is smiling above him.

"I am your friend, am I not?"

And he is at his desk in his classroom, and Hannibal is here, and he is as still crazy as he was before.

"This is another dream, isn't it?" He asks, and Hannibal nods. "Why does this keep happening?"

He's been here before such a long time ago it seems now. A dead child, and a girl with missing eyes. The hand on his shoulder seems to tense before Hannibal finally answers him.

"Some things we are just not meant to know, my friend. It is of the level that the truth could kill even the strongest. Do you truly wish to know?"

He nods and closes his eyes. (He'sdonehe'sdonehe'sdone.) "Just tell me, Hannibal."

Hannibal smiles.

"What do you dream of, Will?"

He can feel the frustration grow, can feel it fester in his bones like a raging sore. He does not want to answer this, he doesn't want to deal with this! He knows of what he dreams, and he doesn't want to talk about it because it's madness – it's sheer madness and insanity that haunt his every waking moment.

And yet, the words flow from his mouth anyways.

"There are so many dreams." (_littlechildprayloveme_) "The dreams of my imagination, the dreams of my fears, the dreams of make-believe and tomfoolery. And then," he stops there for only a minute to admit what should never be admitted to the foul air before him, "there are the dreams that terrify me."

The pressure is gone from his shoulder, and Will forces himself to look up. Before him, Hannibal sits, drawn into the story Will is about to tell. (was about to tell)

"We're in your office," Will states. "How did we get in your office?"

"This is a dream, Will."

"But the dreams end then." He states, hysteria rising. It is a bubbling mess that threatens to overtake what little self-control he has left. "Every time you've asked, the dream has always stopped. Why does this one go on?"

"It wasn't the right time," the good doctor returns.

"Will it end then? If I tell you, will the dreams end?"

Hannibal clasped his hands before him. "Do you wish for them to end?"

"I've wanted them to end since they first began. Do you know what it's like to fear going to sleep? To fear what beholds you at the other end once you let go? They're far beyond the dreams of Hobbs and skinned angels, Hannibal! These are the terrors of other people – of crimes I have to witness but can't stop. They tear me apart and leave me to pieces upon the floor where I can't even garner the decency to pick myself back up. And then, on top of it, I don't even remember what day it is. Is it even a day anymore? Have I just died? Slipped into a coma of some sorts where everything is real but it's all a lie?"

"I'm sorry, Will. I had no idea the extent of how bad they have gotten."

"Of course not. After all, it keeps cutting out every time I attempt to tell you. It's utterly pointless. It's going to keep going on and on and on and haunt me until I die. I dream of dead children, Hannibal. It started with a mother murdering her infant – insisting it wasn't her child and that instead it was a monster in human clothing. Another, a girl had her eyes ripped out because she saw too much. And poor, poor Abigail, being swallowed up by a hole in the ground as we were chased through the woods by devils in the sky. It's all dreams that don't make any sense, and I don't understand them."

Will looks at him, unable to make eye contact. "Will it stop?" He doesn't know what's up or down. If it's night or day. All he knows is the vague mist of a dream and the knowledge that something's wrong.

X

He –

He doesn't know where he is.

"Humans are so dull," a voice says to his left; a sweeping hand over his shoulder. "Would you not agree, dead man?"

"I'm alive," Will hears himself saying to the empty air. He is alone, he is alone, he is all alone in a clearing full of emptiness and the face of fall. "Can you say the same for yourself?"

"Devils and demons," a musical voice hums. "Alive, alive-o."

With a grunt, he's thrown back into the trunk of a tree, feeling an arm being crushed against himself and the bark of the tree. His eyes close shut from the blow, and they're forced open by the prying hand of the attacker before him.

"Get off me," he hisses.

"Even still?" His attacker purrs. "My, my, the Winter King still up to his old tricks. What a pity."

He struggles against the other's weight, but a blow to his windpipe crushes all voice of resistance.

"Don't you remember me, dead man?" The man whispers in his ear, caressing his injured throat. "After all, you so rudely peeked in upon my engagement night."

He doesn't remember, he doesn't remember, he doesn't know why, and then there's a hand at his throat, strangling the life out of him, and he can feel the horror boiling in his veins. Wrapped around the man's fingers are bells, pressing deep into his throat. Jingling, ringling bells that echo in the dead forest like screaming sirens.

"You," he whispers. "It's you!"

"Me," he returns cheekily. "It's nice to meet you."

"You killed all those girls," Will seethes; blood stained into his memory, bleeding hearts being devoured! "You're the monster here."

"Me?" The fey asks with a note of laughter. "Yes. Yes, I'm a monster. All of my kind are monsters – some more so than even I! I am but a plebeian amongst the ranks of the mighty courts- a little beast below the gruesome dragons and disgusting devils that ruin us. To humanity, my kind are the beasts of your dreams, stealing your woman and your kin, attempting to give birth to our dying race through pillage and rape! Nature is our boon, our home – we live in the trees and the golden palaces of spider silk and nightmares of frightened little humans. What terrible monsters we are – drempt up from the terror of humanity who cannot see into the dark. But you would know all about that, wouldn't you?"

Then, the tips of his sharp fingers dig into Will's cheek, and he can feel the blossom of pain, feel the drip of blood.

"I'm not a monster," he hisses, and it's a flit lie spread out before him, wrapping its thick hands around his throat.

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," the fey tells him. "But of course, you don't sleep much these days, or do you?"

He grits his teeth.

"Humanity is strange." The fey whispers. "It's full of secrets, and terror, and gods, and anger, and mistakes, and forgiveness, and everything you can possibly think of beneath this great big star you've stolen from us. You've been to our world, have you not? Witnessed the communion of your race in the throes of our passion, in the the midst of our liveliness. With our dead stars and dying fiddles. What a pity, what a pity."

"What have I done to you?" Will bites out, feeling the sting of the fey's nail embedded deep in his face, feeling it digging, feeling it looking for something (is he looking for his soul?)

He screams, feeling a chunk of flesh being torn from his face. The fey rears back, looking terrified and angry and murderous and so unhuman in that moment that Will ever wonders how he could have ever mistaken such a monster for being human.

"What have you done? What have you done!" He yells, screams echoing off the dead bark of the trees. "What haven't you and your kind _done?_ You're an ignorant fool, raised in your bayou beliefs of an enslaved people who are still not free! Do you know nothing of the terror you've caused my kind? Of the terror you've caused _me_? She is dead because of you. She is dead because of your very existence! Thousands are dead and worlds are destroyed because of your kind!"

He sees the backhand coming before it strikes, and Will is able to throw his weight out of the way of the blow. There is a numbness in his arm, and a numbness in his face, but he is away from the monster in a human's skin. The creature does not follow, turned to stone by his own wrath.

"You should be insignificant," the fey seethes. "You should be a bug, a speck of dirt that is washed away by the tide of the ocean! You should be another human with a dead heart, but you're not. You've gone and stolen the madness of our King! But you know nothing, don't you? Of course you don't. For all your genius, you're a pawn upon the mighty chessboard of our worlds. What a pity, what a pity."

Will wipes the pooling blood off his face, feeling it stain his fingers all too familiarly. "And for this? For this I deserve to die, I deserve to be killed? For something I have had no control over?"

"You understand nothing, human. I don't care that you've stolen the heart of the Winter King. He was a mad man with a dead mother and a dead sister who wanted nothing more than winter to return to his home once more. The Winter King in control of the Summerlands? It's not supposed to be Summer. It's supposed to be winter – a cold and cruel harsh winter forever and forever, and it was Summer until he fell in love with a fool with the heart of a dead man. If anything, I should be thanking you for unfortunate fate! But this is not the case, dead man."

"Tell me then." Will demands. "What have I done? What is my sin?"

"You killed her." The fey says with a smile. "You killed my Lisbeth."

"Lisbeth?" He asks, and it hits him (the bells leaves marks in his face) that it's the name of the girl in green. "No. No, I had nothing to do with that. That was you! You killed her! You killed all of them!"

"Killed her?" He repeats. "_Killed her_? You must be stupid. Why, oh why would I kill the one – the singular one out of all those I found – who chose to stay? Why would I kill the one who chose to _love _me?"

"And if she left? If she chose to leave you, would you have killed her?"

His face is ashen. "Of course. I would have no choice. If I couldn't have her, no mortal could have her either, you stupid fool. But I did not kill her. Her blood is not on my hands – it's on yours. After all, it was your lover, dreamwalker. Or did he forget to tell you when he was marking you?"

The creature begins to approach Will, walking softly towards him, forcing Will to step back in order to keep the distance apart. The rip in his face aches, and he can feel the blood drying.

"You're mad." Will tells him, and he can see it in the monster's eyes (this is madness, this is true madness, driven by love or obsession). "I don't have a lover. I don't know any King of yours. I don't know what you want from me or any one else I know. This is insane, and you and I both know it."

The fey laughs – a high pitched giggle that grates on Will's ears. "Oh, you don't know? I shouldn't be surprised. You still think he's human, don't you? I suppose it's believable, but even you, dead man, must see through to the truth – the face of a monster beneath that humanity he wears like a veil. He is a great Fey King, half-mad and half-human who can pass through your world as easy as any man. What a pity he isn't here to watch the very human he's loved to fall victim to very monsters he's tried to make you accept. Does your dead heart beat, dreamwalker, for the King who loves a dead man who sees all and screams into the cesspool the great human race has become?"

He is stunned into silence, unable to formulate a response. This moment of stunned quiet, unable to comprehend the words being poured forth by a mad man, proves to be his downfall. The fey pushes forward, slamming into him and knocking him over to the ground. Below, the grass is dead, and he can feel whatever living has had the life crushed out of it.

"I only want to be loved." The fey mourns, looming over him dangerously. "Humans have stolen so much – is it not fair to take back something when all else is lost? You have razed our forests, burned our gods, killed our children with pitchfork and tools of Heaven, and we keep to the forgotten realms, shrinking and shrinking as humanity dares to forget to dream of the creatures of whom they once desecrated beneath their pyres of self-righteousness and crosses! I have only stolen what I deserve. Those girls were given their chance, dead man, and they made their choice! Only Lisbeth understood! And even know, she was stolen from me because of _you_."

"I didn't kill her," he repeats, but it's useless.

"It's because of you she's dead. Because the king had to make a point – that we cannot be savages and take as we please, that we cannot steal our women like we would cattle. That they must come willingly."

With a smile, the fey runs a hand down Will's chest, clawing open his shirt.

"Tell me, Will. Will you come away with me?"

X

He feels as if he has been ripped open – as if the very innards of his gut have been pulled away to reveal the hollow of his belly. As if someone has dug their hands into the wound of his stomach and pulled away everything that made him human.

This is dying, he realises with a grim smile. This is dying. Laying on the floor with his life bleeding out beneath him – a pool of vermilion that ripples with the shutter of his weakening form. He's been here before, a thousand years ago. Then, it had been a southern sky with the world screaming all about him – sirens and yelling and gunfire and silence. Death had been so close nearly a million years ago it seems, and he wonders if he never left – that he's still bleeding out the dusk sky with the bullet lodged in his bones that had stolen his life so many years ago.

But he knows it for the lie it is. It's a lie, a terrible lie. The reek of the city is gone, the howl of humanity has long left its bitter scars. There is darkness about him, and he is happy to die here – alone and angry and bitter, but happy to at least have this.

He's happy to die, to feel the world burn out beneath him in a sea of red – to feel the universe collapse and break apart as the beating of his heart slows, to feel all of existence to suffer at his hands.

He is happy –

X

He wakes.

"How are you feeling?"

Next to him, Hannibal smiles his terrible smile, crowned in a crown of bleeding thorns, and Will can feel the stars die out beneath his feet.

"Why won't you let me die?"

X

–and there is screaming, screaming and terror; thousands of shattering pieces of glass, echoes of a world breaking apart. The fog lifts, and the veil covering his eyes burns away in the light of the fire in his veins.

It is him who is screaming, and he can feel the betrayal lodge itself in his throat as the weeping eyes in the face of a friend go so cold.

Her grin is gone, and there is blood on his hands. Beverley Katz has shot him, and the world is right once more.

X

Monster.

Monster.

Monster monster monster monster monster monster monstermonstermonstermonstermonster –

This is the word they call him – the word they have carved into his skin.

He can feel them at his back, calling his name, but he refuses to come, refuses to go. He can see the lies written into the paleness of their faces (and the blood on their pale fingers; ghosts screaming in the dark.)

It is Tuesday.

Yesterday was Monday.

The proceeding day was Sunday, and the day before that was Saturday. Waking up and knowing the day is the only solace he is within the realm of four walls and a steel door.

He has not slept in four days. (or is it five? There is ticking on the wall, but there is no clock; there is silence.)

_Come away with us _the shadows murmur and yell and scream and kick (and only he can hear them, only he can hear them in the dark shush shush)

.

.

.

(what makes him so different than every other monster who walks the gallows?)

He is not remembering, not remembering why he is here. There are people who come, people who go, people who state who they are and whisper his name (and he does not know and he does not know). They have sad eyes and gentle hands, but there is terror there.

There is always terror there.

Monster they do not call him, but he can see it in their eyes. He can see it (like he sees the creatures in the hall, the ones who laugh and yell and the ones who scream and beg and he can hear them.)

.

.

.

It is madness – this state of delusion he is in. He knows it, and he wants to see reason, but the darkness calls. The people of this world are cruel and unusual, and they call upon him – they call upon him to answer their questions, to prove their own innocence within the turmoil of their terrible minds.

What a pity what a pity.

He does not sleep.

.

.

.

There is a man who comes on Thursdays, but Will knows that he is not a man – that he's a monster in a human guise who wears people like a veil. No one believes him.

(Noonebelieveshim whobelievesmonsters?)

A name carved in history, rising mountains and screaming elephants who perish in the dark, asking one question and one question only.

"Will you come away with me?"

.

.

.

(For this man comes in his dreams too and rips out his heart, begging with his eyes for him to say yes, for him to say yes and put this madness to an end.)

.

.

.

It takes a year.

He does not sleep. Only in darkness and in the slur of medicine forced down his veins.

(For there is terror in his dreams, and the stuff of others he does not want to see.)

A year of torture and a thousand needles and a thousand people asking questions to things he does not know. They want to know why, why he killed those girls – why he strung them up and ate their hearts; why he murdered a little girl. He does not know, he does not know, and it's madness – the way they see his madness and see it as his sin.

He is a sinner, he is godless, and he has murdered, killed and burned their world to ashes.

(We will see you crumble in your dreams, they whisper and smile)

They haunt him. They haunt him, and they taunt, and there is a man with scars in his stomach, fear in his eyes who whispers, who whispers in his dreams of the greatness he will make (of the terror he will steal and make himself a God.)

He says yes.

X

He sleeps.

He sleeps, and he can hear the screaming – humanity bleeding out its sin beneath the broken bones and terror –

X

–He dreams.

He dreams, and Hannibal is kneeling at Will's feet.

"It is time," the good Doctor says, and he draws to his feet. "Will you come away with me, Will?"

"Where are we going?" He asks. He sounds like a child, feels like a child.

"Home," Hannibal tells him, and there is a wreath of thorns in his hair, and blood on his face. "You are going home, Will."

He cranes his neck to look above, and it is nothing but darkness and the boughs of wicked trees, weeping in the wind that isn't real. A thousand memories come flooding back, slamming full force into him, filling him with dreams and anger and sorrow and a thousand things that aren't his – that aren't things he should know. Eternal winter is gathered around him, and he is sitting upon a throne of broken trees and broken bones, and there is Hannibal, there is Hannibal with his crown of thorns and beautiful smile –

"Let me go." He begs, and he is a child, and he wants to go home (to cry and scream and beg and weep.)

"I cannot." Hannibal tells him, and he sound sorry (but he is not, he is not, and it's a flithy fucking lie).

"I don't belong here," he tells him, and it's true. He doesn't belong here, in this realm of dreams and terrible lies – he belongs in the grave, in prison, in anywhere where he is alone (where he can weep away whatever lies he's fed to himself). "You have to let me go."

"I'm afraid not, Will," Hannibal tells him before forcing a hand beneath Will's stubbly chin. "There is nothing to go back to but bones and crumbling ruins. I am all you have left."

"You're lying," he demands, and –

"I cannot lie." Hannibal whispers with a smile. "You're trapped, my dearheart."

"That's not possible," Will says, and there are bones beneath him crumbling, trees around him burning. "This isn't right!"

"You said yes, Will." He returns as if they are discussing the weather (but there is no weather here but winter and warmth and terrible lies). "Trapped for a thousand years with the monster of your dreams. Whatever will you do?"

He can feel the fear gather in his throat, can feel the darkness looming at his back. He should not be there. He should not be here, and Hannibal is standing before him, smiling and smiling and smiling –

"You can never leave." Hannibal murmurs into his ear before pulling away. "Not when you've given me this."

In his hands is Will's heart, and he screams.

.

.

.

He does not wake.

AN:

If you're reading this, you either a) finished the story, b) skipped down to the end to see whatever the hell you're getting into. Either way, congratulations!

Obviously, I'm gonna tell you right now that I have no excuse for this story whatsoever. I had an idea, went with it, got off track, fucked up, tried coming back, fucked up more, and finally finished it like a day before the final draft (and I actually started the story in Augustish I think. Haha.)

So yeah, there's no excuse. Hannibal is a fairy, and Will is fucked. The end!

Also, the quote "Devils and Demons alive, alive-o." isn't actually of my own creation. It's from the song The Last Steampunk Waltz by Ghostfire.


End file.
